On the Fourth Sunday of Lent parishes preparing people for baptism will celebrate the second of three "scrutinies." The word "scrutiny" comes from Latin and French and refers to what we might call dumpster diving, the work of folks who look for valuables in what others have thrown away. This call to learn what to save and what to let go, how to distinguish treasure from trash, frames today's Liturgy of the Word.

We begin about 1,000 years before the time of Christ with God's surprising choice of the boy David to be Israel's king. In a society that prized the firstborn, warriors and wise men, Samuel had to accept and defend God's "scrutinizing" choice of a mere kid to be secretly anointed as successor to Saul. About the only thing more unexpected would have been for Samuel to anoint a woman — but would have been too much for a people who believed that military victories proved God's favor. (Joan of Arc would not appear for another 2,400 years.)

The choice of David and the statement that God sees differently than we do is the setup for the story of the healing of the man born blind. Now the core question is, "What are we supposed to see?"

Unlike the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus says little and does much, John's Gospel offers lots more talk than action, and even the action stories have so many layers of meaning that they read like discourses. This story opens with the statement that Jesus saw a man who had been blind from birth, a malady the disciples understood as a punishment meted out on either the man or his parents. Jesus adjusted their perspective, explaining that God doesn't see things as human beings do. With a statement that Paul repeated by saying that for those who love God, all things work for good (Romans 8:28), Jesus said that the man's condition would show forth the works of God.

That was Jesus' subtle foreshadowing of all that was about to follow: He was continuing God's work of creation. To illustrate that, mimicking the creation of Adam from the river-watered dust (Genesis 2:6), Jesus made clay to use like chrism on the man's eyes. Jesus then told him to wash, and that washing opened the man's eyes.

It's hard to imagine this fellow's experience of new sight. Years ago, the movie "At First Sight" depicted the agonizing experience of a young man, blind from the age of 3, whose sight was surgically restored. Although he could see, his brain could not decode the images before him. He couldn't make sense of the world he had learned to navigate by touch and sound. That's the extreme experience John describes here. It's a wonderful thing to see, but our newly sighted friend had to totally reorient himself to "live in the light."

Even as he was reestablishing his identity, the people around him were annoyed. Religious leaders debunked Jesus, asserting that God would never sanction work on the Sabbath. The fellow's parents were too afraid of repercussions to take a stand on what had happened. In the end, only the fellow himself gave testimony, realizing in the process that nobody wanted to believe that Jesus had done him good. But the man saw one thing clearly: Jesus could not have healed him "if he were not of God."

 This fellow, nameless so that everyone can recognize themselves in him, knew nothing about Jesus, except that he did him good. As he went through the process of gaining a new perspective and being persecuted for it, he understood ever more clearly that the one who had healed him on the Sabbath was doing the work of God. Jesus had opened his eyes to new dimensions of God's goodness — and that was what got him into trouble.

After the poor fellow had been questioned, abandoned by his parents, and excommunicated, Jesus found him again. This time, Jesus explained that, unlike the others, the fellow was a successful scrutinizer. When Jesus assured him that he had encountered the "Son of Man," the man bowed down in worship.

What about us? Baptism (washing), symbolic of death and rising, is our sacrament of reorientation. Unfortunately, many of us who were baptized as infants have learned to protect our inherited perspectives, resisting even miracles if they challenge our comfortable patterns of thinking and acting.

This Sunday, we can't help but hear this Gospel as an invitation to scrutinize our perspectives, sort through our presuppositions and see what should be discarded and what new insights might be hidden in unexpected, even unwanted places. True, choosing to try to learn God's perspective will cause great disorientation, but the option is to choose self-imposed blindness.

Today's Liturgy of the Word starts us out with the Israelites and Moses in the desert. After accepting God's invitation to abandon slavery for freedom, the people quickly started complaining: They missed the food the Egyptians let them have, they feared they would die of thirst … and on and on.

Acting as if God had made no plans and was incapable of providing for them, they groused so much that Moses expected a mutiny. (See Numbers 11 where Moses accuses God of being a negligent mother and complains that his task is more than he can handle.) In response, and to show how shortsighted they were, the creator of snow and rain brought water from stone, demonstrating that for God, nothing is impossible. (See Job 38.)

The desert wanderers really did have legitimate cause for worry. Like so many people today, they had no idea where their next meal would come from and clean water had become a luxury they could only remember. When we consider how little time they had spent in freedom, we can appreciate that they were like dependent children, frightened because the situation was entirely out of their control.

Israel's thirst sets up John's account of the woman at the well. Although we rarely note it, a key aspect of this story is that Jesus was the one who was thirsty. This gives us a pretty iconoclastic image of God! We, who usually turn to God for help, are faced with Jesus, the Christ, sitting thirsty by a well without a bucket. Then, along comes a feisty Samaritan woman. The Savior of the world makes a request: "Give me a drink."

Water is a precious commodity in the desert. Sharing water symbolizes hospitality, openness to the stranger and respect for life. In an inside out image of the God who draws water from stone, the vulnerable Jesus must ask for life-giving water and acceptance, and he does it at the well that symbolizes her heritage of faith in the God of Abraham. Once they have begun their conversation, the tables turn again and Jesus reveals that the divine thirst is not for water, but for a life-giving relationship with humanity.

What happened in the interchange between Jesus and Photina (the name the Orthodox give the Samaritan) should have been more threatening to the guardians of Jewish and Samaritan religion than anything else Jesus preached. When Photina tried to pit the Jewish and Samaritan approaches to God against one another, Jesus led her beyond every expression of denominationalism and dependence on ritual. All that mattered to Jesus was that Photina (and by extension all people) would know God as he did; he thirsted for her to be moved by God's own Spirit and to abide in the truth-generating relationships that flow from that.

This is exactly what happened. As Photina began to comprehend what Jesus was saying, her feistiness turned to curiosity and then to faith. As the representative of a people who had sought God through a series of shallow affiliations (five husbands), she found a truth and love worthy of her and was impelled to share it.

Too often, we focus on Photina's "five husbands," as if this story were about the conversion of a loose woman. That overlooks the astounding theology and universality of this Gospel message. Theologically, this Gospel story reminds us that our creator invites humanity into relationship, but never imposes. This paints a picture of God as both vulnerable and thirsty, ever waiting near some well to offer life to those who can listen, wonder and respond. The universality of today's message comes through Jesus' proclamation that real worship and relationship with God does not depend on place or ritual, but on how the people become vulnerable to the Spirit's action in their lives.

Paul preaches this very same message in the Letter to the Romans when he assures us that our "justification" is based on faith. If we were to put Paul's idea in the context of the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we would say that salvation springs from relationship with God; it is never bound by any particular deed, creed or ritual. Salvation happens when we attend to God's thirst and respond with personal hospitality. Once we have been affected by a relationship with God, it automatically begins to flow into all our other relationships, making us not just believers, but almost irresistible evangelizers.

Today, Photina may appear to us in many guises. We will recognize her not by her name, geography or appearance, but rather by her enthusiastic love and the way she invites us to respond to God's thirst and enjoy living water forever. Like her, all we need do is respond. As a result, the world's thirst will begin to be quenched.